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Femtofox    The tiny, low power Linux Meshtastic node

The Luckfox Pico Mini is a compact and power efficient Linux capable board, capable of running Ubuntu. Femtofox is an expansion of the Luckfox's capabilities, combining a customized Ubuntu image with a custom PCB, integrating it with a LoRa radio to create a power efficient, cheap and small Meshtastic Linux node.

Features:

  • Tiny size (63x54mm for the Kitchen Sink Edition, 65x30mm for the Smol Edition). Roughly equivalent to a Raspberry Pi and Pi Zero.
  • Power efficiency (~0.38w)
  • Full Linux CLI (Ubuntu) via our pre-built Foxbuntu image
  • Meshtastic native client support via SPI
  • USB host support
  • Wifi over USB
  • RTC support

Accomplished:

  • Meshtastic native client controlling a LoRa radio (see supported hardware)
  • WIFI over USB (see supported hardware)
  • Ethernet over USB (see supported hardware)
  • Ethernet over pins (see Networking below and wiring diagram at bottom of page)
  • UART communications with Meshtastic nodes (2 pin pairs) such as RAK Wisblock
  • USB serial communications with Meshtastic nodes (see supported hardware)
  • USB mass storage
  • Real time clock (RTC) support (see supported hardware)
  • Activity LED disabled. User LED will blink for 5 seconds when boot is complete
  • Pressing the "BOOT" button triggers reboot
  • Ability to reconfigure wifi via USB flash drive
  • Meshtasticd to run LoRa radio over SPI (accomplished, updated image and instructions coming soon)
  • Allow editing of config files by plugging in thumb drive
  • Ability to activate or deactivate WIFI via Meshtastic admin

Project goals:

  • A solar-deployable Meshtastic node running Linux, without needing a giant solar panel / battery
  • Wifi capabilities (with ability to disable/enable wifi via mesh for power savings)

Login for the images is femto:fox. Root is root:root.

The preconfigured images will reboot every 24 hours. If the internal clock is accurate, this will be at 3am. Reboot timing is set in crontab. To keep accurate time, an RTC module can be installed (see supported hardware) or internet connectivity can be maintained for NTP. If no authoritative time source is found, time will be set to 2024-01-01 00:00 on boot.

Supported hardware - click here

Networking:

There are four methods to get online:

  1. Ethernet over USB - most adapters should be supported, but I've only tested the RTL8152 chipset.
  2. USB wifi (see supported hardware).
  3. Preconfigured Ubuntu images: ethernet via the castellated pins at the bottom of the board. See pinout at the bottom of this readme.
  4. RDNIS via usb - see this guide. Note that in the preconfigured images USB is set to host mode, so you'll have to switch back to peripheral with sudo luckfox-config. This is not really recommended, but can be used in a pinch.

Installation - connection to Meshtastic node via UART or USB:

  1. Download the most recent OS image in releases.
  2. Flash the image your MicroSD card using Balena Etcher or your favorite flashing program. You will likely get a warning that the image appears to be invalid or has no partition table. This is normal.
  3. Insert the microSD card into the Luckfox Pico Mini.
  4. Configure the system with a USB drive as described in USB Configuration Tool.

Pinout:

Pin # Pin ID Function Luckfox Pin # Pin ID Function
1 VBus 5V in/out 22 1V8 1.8V out
2 GND 21 GND
3 3V3 3.3V out 20 4C1 1v8 IO, SARADC
4/42 1B2 Debug UART2-TX 19 4C0 1v8 IO, SARADC
5/43 1B3 Debug UART2-RX 18/4 0A4 3v3 IO
6/48 1C0 CS0, IO 17/55 1C7 IRQ, IO
7/49 1C1 CLK, IO 16/54 1C6 BUSY, IO
8/50 1C2 MOSI, IO 15/59 1D3 i2c SCL
9/51 1C3 MISO, IO 14/58 1D2 i2c SDA
10/52 1C4 UART4-TX 13/57 1D1 UART3-RX, NRST
11/53 1C5 UART4-RX 12/56 1D0 UART3-TX, RXEN

Pin ID explanation: 1C6 = GPIO bank 1, group C, pin 6. In Meshtasticd's config.yaml we use GPIO bank 1, and subtract 32 from the pin number.

pinout pinout

Note

The information on this page is given without warranty or guarantee. Links to vendors of products are for informational purposes only. Meshtastic® is a registered trademark of Meshtastic LLC. Meshtastic software components are released under various licenses, see GitHub for details. No warranty is provided - use at your own risk.